| At its peak, the number of ballots challenged by the Senate campaigns of Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman reached 6,655. However, it looks like the Canvassing Board will only have to review no more than 1,500 ballots before we may actually have resolution on the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. The Franken camp announced that it would pare down its total number of challenges to under 500 by Tuesday. Always the follower, the Coleman camp subsequently announced that it would reduce its challenged ballot total to under 1,000 by Tuesday. The Canvassing Board begins its review of challenged ballots on Tuesday and hopes to be done by Friday.
The Associated Press reviewed the challenged ballots and offered its analysis, and it appears to favor the Franken camp:
While the ultimate calls rest with the five-member Canvassing Board, the AP found that most of the ballots have clear intent and no deficiencies for which they would be disqualified under Minnesota law.
The AP's examination of the remaining challenges found:
- Fewer than half of the challenges left-about 1,640-are in genuine doubt. Still, that's eight times more than the current margin between the two men.
- In ballots that could easily be assigned, Franken netted 200 more votes than Coleman. But that number was essentially meaningless because Coleman has withdrawn significantly fewer challenges than Franken-that is, the pool of challenges that can be awarded to Franken at this stage is notably larger.
- Nearly 300 challenges wouldn't benefit either man because the voter clearly favored a third-party candidate or skipped the race.
- Of the challenges that can't be reliably awarded to either candidate now, more than 400 possible Franken votes are being held up because on grounds that those voters identified their ballots through write-ins, initials, signatures, phone numbers or some other distinctive marking. At least 300 possible Coleman votes are in limbo for the same reasons.
- The next biggest class of ballot that can't easily be awarded falls in the category of unclear voter intent. Nearly 600 involve cases where a voter filled in two ovals but crossed out one, put an X above or below their darkened oval or put differently sized partial marks in more than one. There are slightly more potential Franken ballots in that pile as well.
While more hard numbers would be useful, it stands to reason that if "most of the ballots have clear intent" and lack disqualifying deficiencies, and if Coleman is challenging twice as many ostensibly pro-Franken ballots than Franken is challenging ostensibly pro-Coleman ballots, then Franken stands to gain over the course of the ballot review, and possibly gain significantly at that.
Further, once the Canvassing Board gets on a roll, projections of outstanding challenged ballots may become much easier to determine based on early decisions:
The AP analysis suggests that the process could move fast once the board shows its mind on the challenge types that occurred most frequently.
Ohio State University election law expert Edward Foley, who is closely tracking Minnesota's recount, suspects the board's early rulings will have a multiplying effect.
"Once a pattern is set, a large number of those challenges will fall into that pattern," Foley said. He added, "Both sides are doing a dance: 'If we take those off the table, will you take those off?'"
Foley said the campaigns won't want to lose the goodwill of board members by forcing them to rule on the same question repeatedly.
Several members made clear in a hearing Friday they won't have patience for weak challenges.
"The danger for both candidates is that meritorious challenges are going to get swamped in a sea of frivolous challenges," Ramsey County Judge Edward Cleary warned. "You know when they're frivolous, we know when they're frivolous. Don't make us tell you that."
Through Saturday, the campaigns had pulled back a combined 3,158 of their initial 6,655 challenges.
State election officials said they hope to know by Tuesday what effect the withdrawals have on the candidate totals.
As of right now, the Minnesota Secretary of State's office puts Franken's deficit at 188 votes and the Star Tribune puts the deficit at 192 votes. (It's unclear whether these counts take into account the ramifications of the Canvassing Board's decisions on Friday, which were viewed to be of numerical benefit to the Franken camp.) Both counts exclude challenged ballots. The Franken camp's count, which includes challenged ballots, shows him with a small lead. (It's unlikely that Franken's publicized four-vote lead takes into account Friday's decisions. As a result of those decisions, their internal count likely presents a larger lead.)
The key will be pace. As the Canvassing Board reviews the 1,500 challenged ballots, will the gap between the the Secretary of State's & the media's nearly 200-vote deficit and the Franken's camp's internal count's narrow lead close at a pace exceeding the pace of challenged ballots reviewed overall? As challenged ballots are reviewed, Franken has ground to make up, but indications are that he can make up that ground. We'll find out (a lot) more on Tuesday. Stay tuned. |
